Transposition by sight for young players

[bandman322]

A great accident happened for me, and I’d love to share it with you. First to set up the scenario, I have to admit that the greatest problem I have with my students is their sight-reading ability.

I teach in a Catholic Middle School and one of the things that we stress is service to our church. I often tell my students that sharing their musical talents is a way they can be of service, and as a bonus it may lead to them getting paying church jobs when they grow up. I think the best church musicians are those who truly understand the liturgical missions of the church, and understand how music adds to the service in a special way.

The kids play for school mass, and also play with the youth choirs of some of the other churches in our area. Unlike you and I, the kids get lots of time to prepare for the Mass they will play for, and I write all the parts out for them.

At a school mass the last month the choir director pulled out a piece of music and said, “you think you could do this with us at Communion?” I said yes and transposed by sight. The kids were amazed that I could sight-read in a different key.

At the next help session with some of my trumpet students who play Masses they inquired if I would teach them to transpose by sight. This first required that I explain to them how we transpose, and we spent some time playing out of a beginner’s band book transposing by sight. The following things happened:

1) Several went home and played their entire beginner band book up a whole step.
2) Some brought in missals and hymnals and started transposing things together at lunchtime. It was like it was a game to see if they could do it.
3) They told our church choir director that they no longer wanted parts transposed for them, but that they would do it themselves and have me check it when they finished (uhhhh, thanks for the extra work for the band director!!)

Yesterday we went through a sight-reading exercise in class, and the trumpets, formerly my worst reading section, nailed their parts. After I praised them for how well they had done, they shared that reading a part is easy, but challenged the rest of the class to learn to transpose by sight as they had (little do they know they still have a long ways to go). We told the class what they were doing and then the entire class read a very easy piece they had already learned, but played it up a whole step.

Concentration was at the maximum as these young middle school students made it through about 32 measures of a piece, and it didn’t sound bad at all. In over 25-years of teaching 7th and 8th grade students I have never used transposition as a tool. My young trumpet players are well on the way to being able to take a piece in church and sight-read it during mass while transposing by sight. We all know that the vast majority of our young players will go on to be professionals in fields other than music, but this has set them up to play with their church choirs for the rest of their lives. And for me, I get the added bonus of kids who are excited about sight-reading and have increased their sight-reading abilities by 50% in about a month!
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[MrGBand]

I can second your thoughts about sight reading and transposition. I know that when I started transposition studies in High School my sight reading improved dramatically. In fact, it helped turn a weakness into a strength.
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[Strawdoggy]

Interesting.

Did you see more improvement in pitch accuracy than rhythmic accuracy in their sight reading skills? At first thought, I would think that "note" accuracy would improve the most, but if the overall concentration level is higher, I guess everything could move up a notch.

[Jeff_Purtle]

I have done it a good bit with kids as young as 6th grade that have played less than one year. It is nice for them to be able to play along with hymns in church and get the point of one of the reasons to know your scales.

Jeff
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Jeff Purtle
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